


In Posse, In Esse

by MadHattie



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games), Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma - Fandom
Genre: 1904 Phi, Gen, MAJOR ztd spoilers, Speculative, like seriously don't read if you haven't finished the game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHattie/pseuds/MadHattie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a Phi whose story we haven't heard</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Posse, In Esse

They are reborn, in a sense, at only a few days old. Or maybe they are entities separate from the children they were copied from. In that case they are born in the output bays of the transporter in 1904 to the surprise and terror of a host of German scientists. Two infants with only their names and their mother’s mementos. The scientists run every test they can think of, but aside from their place of origin, they seem to be just normal babies. The one called Phi may be oddly quiet, but her brother Delta is fussy enough for the both of them. They are kept under surveillance until nothing new can be learned about the two of them and they become too much for the lab workers to handle. They are only three years old, but they are without a home or a family. A young researcher takes them home with him, promising to monitor their development. He is curious about who they will grow up to be, but more than that he wants to protect them. He and his wife have their own son, a newborn named Left, and it hurts him to imagine his own child without a home. He takes them into his family and promises to keep them safe. 

They grow up as normal kids, on the surface at least. Underneath there are incidents that Phi can’t quite explain, filled with false memories and lost time. The first she can remember is a visit to the ocean, being pulled too far out by a wave and feeling her lungs fill with salt water. She blacks out and wakes up earlier that morning in her own bed. That day she refuses to even put her feet into the water. 

Her brother’s powers are much easier to define, but their presence is just as confusing. He tells her and Left that he can hear the things that people think as clearly as if they were speaking them out loud. The adults don’t know; they assume that Delta has just been eavesdropping, and they reprimand him for it. Phi suspects that there’s even more to his ability than he realizes. There are times when it seems that people always do what he wants them to do, even if it’s not what they would want. It makes her nervous to think that she might not be in control, so she keeps her suspicions as secret as she can from Delta’s prying mind.

They are ten years old when war breaks out and Phi begins to understand what her powers really do. Her adoptive parents insist on remaining in Germany despite the battles that edge ever closer to their home. She can feel danger looming, but even when she begs and pleads they refuse to leave. Even Delta laughs at her concerns, and his disbelief hurts the worst. When a firebomb crashes through their window, fear charges through every cell of her body, but at the same time she can’t help but feel satisfied that she was right. She throws herself in front of her brothers to protect them without even thinking. The heat consumes her and the world goes black.

She wakes up months earlier to her parents urging her to pack her bags. They don’t like the way that this conflict is going, so a friend of theirs had gotten all of them tickets on a boat to America. All they have to do was go quietly so as not to cause too much suspicion among the authorities. She is speechless. She has made jumps before, but none so large that they couldn’t be passed off as strange dreams. But that moment just before waking was far too clear to be a dream. She can still feel the heat on her skin, the ringing in her ears from the explosion. Somehow, some way, she had shifted into another reality.

The incident shocks her into silence. She wants to believe that it was all a dream, but the memory of everything she saw in that other world fights back. She doesn’t know which world to believe in anymore, this one or the one she left behind. For all she knows she could lose this once as well. She’s too paranoid to talk to Delta about it, but he finds out anyway, just as he always does. It happens when she cringes away from the small fireplace in their house, the heat all too reminiscent of her almost-death. She doesn’t even notice Delta standing behind her until he speaks up.

“What was that?” She nearly jumps at the sound of Delta’s voice.

“What was what?” She narrows her eyes at him and tries to put up a mental wall.

“That memory. It was so clear, but I was there, and I don’t remember anything like that ever happening.”

“I thought I told you to stop reading my mind.” She turns her back to the open flame and stares Delta in the eye. His irises have always been such a strange dark blue, almost indigo. When he stares it feels like he’s almost looking through you.

“I can’t help it,” he says, without a bit of regret in his voice, “but really, what was that?”

“Well…” 

She tells him all that she can understand herself; that sometimes she would close her eyes in a moment of danger and open them in a new world, safe and sound. That sometimes it seemed like she went back, even forward in time. Delta listens, attention rapt. When she finishes her explanation his face is so intense with concentration that it almost scares her.

“That’s amazing! You could encounter anything, and you would always turn out alright! It’s like nothing can hurt you!” Delta’s enthusiasm takes her aback.

“I don’t know if I can do all of that. I’ve never actually tried to use my powers on purpose. And besides, it’s not nearly impressive as mind reading.” With these words Delta scowls.

“Mind reading isn’t that great.” He huffs as she raises her eyebrow. “I wonder how far back you can go. Maybe you can find out where we came from and what our parents were like.”

“Delta, we don’t even know if we’re really adopted. That was just a weird theory that you came up with when we were little.”

“But it’s so obvious! No one else in the family has red hair besides us!” He gestures so dramatically that Phi has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “Anyway, if you go back, then you can prove whether my theory is right or wrong.”

“I guess…” She takes a moment to ponder what he said. As much as she hates to admit it, his idea makes some sense. It would be easier to just ask their family directly, but Delta was never one to do thinks the easy way. “But I’ve never tried to control where I go before, and I’ve never gone back to a time that I couldn’t remember.”

“Well maybe if you concentrate hard on where you want to go, you can control where you land. You said that you made the jumps when you were in danger, right?” From his pocket Delta draws a small penknife. Phi moves to take a step back, only to remember that the fire is right behind her.

“Delta…” Her voice wavers. She doesn’t think that he would really hurt her, but with Delta sometimes it was hard to be sure what he would do. 

“Just concentrate on where you want to go,” he says, and he lunges at her with the knife.

She flinches, closes her eyes and

 

wakes up

She feels small and warm, wrapped tightly in some sort of blanket. She tries to move her head and look around, but she doesn’t have the strength. Above her she can only see a strange green shield. Then the shield lifts and the world is vast. The ceiling is far out of reach to accommodate for huge machines that she has never seen before. A pair of hands lift her out of the pod and cradle her. As she is picked up she catches a glimpse of a silver charm next to her; almost like the brooch that her adoptive mother had given her when she was young. She looks up at the person holding her as best she can and catches a glimpse of black hair and a serious face.

“Do you think it worked?” Phi wiggles around as best she can to find the source of the voice. There’s a woman there with hair the same flame red as Phi’s own. In her arms is a cloth-wrapped bundle that might be Delta; she can’t get a good enough look to be sure.

“We can only hope.” The voice rumbles through the man’s chest. It’s low and comforting, but Phi can hear the worry in his words. “At least we know that if it did work, they’ll arrive far before Zero gets his hands on the transporter.”

“Sigma,” the voice of the woman that Phi can only assume is her mother wavers “what do we do now? There’s no more food, and we’ve been here for ten months without anyone coming to help.”

“We wait for the end.” The man’s- Sigma’s- jaw tightens. “Or we bring it about ourselves.”

“Sigma, what do you mean?” the woman asks, voice quiet.

“Diana,” Sigma takes a deep breath. Phi can feel his chest rise and fall “there are many things in this facility that could kill us. If we wanted to, we could make sure that we all die together. It would be a much quicker way to go, but I need to know that you’re okay with it.”

“I—“ Phi hears her mother’s voice waver “I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t want to lose you either,” Sigma says, his voice quiet “Not you or Phi or Delta. If we take this other route, we won’t have to be alone.”

“Then… I want us to go together.” Diana closes the distance between the two of them and presses her face into Sigma’s chest as best she can with Phi and Delta in between them. “I’m just scared Sigma. I’m scared for all of us.”

“In another world we are all safe and happy,” Sigma says “we just have to believe in that world as this one comes to a close.”

As her father takes a step towards the strange machine, Phi’s mind reels. How did he know about other universes? Had she and Delta been sent to another universe somehow? But then how could she be here as well as in the world where she had grown up? She tries to say something, but all she can do is wail.

“Shhh Phi, it’s okay. It will all be okay.” Sigma looks down and Phi looks into her father’s grey eyes for the first time. There is love there, and sadness. They are old eyes, far older than the body that holds them. He breaks his gaze and carries her over to one of the tables in the room. He shifts her into one arm, and with his free hand grabs a strange contraption covered in wheels and pictures.

“There’s something that I think I remember from another timeline.” He calls as he walks back towards the transporter. “If we destroy the control panel of the transporter, the whole thing will go into a meltdown and explode.”

When he reaches the place where Diana stands he pauses to take the situation in once more. His face seems calm, but Phi can feel his breaths shuddering through his chest. Diana looks to be about the same.

“Are you ready?”

Diana nods.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The strange object comes crashing down on the control panel. It shatters and the world goes white.

 

And then

 

she wakes.

Her body is collapsed on the floor. Delta peers over at her, his face painted with curiosity. It takes a moment for her to remember how do breathe. When she finally regains her composure the first thing she does is glare at Delta.

“You were going to stab me! What the hell, Delta!” It feels like everything here happened ages ago, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t still pissed off at her brother.

“I wasn’t actually going to stab you,” Delta says without a bit of remorse in his voice “I just wanted to make your powers work. You said that they only activated when you were in danger, so I put you in danger. And it worked, right?”

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t make it right.” Phi picks herself up off of the floor and brushes the dust off of her clothes.

“So what did you see? I tried to ask you sooner, but all you would do was stare at me. I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to say anything.”

“I saw-” she takes a deep breath “I saw our birth parents. Both of them.”

“I knew it!” Delta grins “What were they like? Where were they from? Did you see why they left us?”

“They… they seemed kind. I think that they loved us. But they were in such a strange place. They talked about dying as if they were sure that it was going to happen. I think that’s why they sent us away. But the way they did it…” She struggles to find the words.

“I can just read your mind and see,” Delta snaps, impatient. Phi wants to protest, but she knows that there’s no stopping her brother when he gets an idea into his head. She calls up the memory of what she saw as best she can; the strange machine, the pods where they were placed. Delta’s eyes widen.

“I think that they used those machines to send us here somehow.” She says, trying her best to cloud her thoughts so that Delta will listen to her words. “It seemed like they knew about other worlds too. And they said something about sending us to a place before someone called Zero could get the machine. I think that they might be from the future.”

“Did you learn anything else about them? Maybe we could try to find them. Maybe they’re still alive.”

“All I know is that their names are Sigma and Diana.” She shakes her head “Everything about that place was so strange. There’s a chance that everything there happened so far into the future that they haven’t even been born yet.”

“So we might end up being older than our parents,” Delta says with wonder in his voice. “Hey, I was there too, right? At the place you saw?”

Phi snorts. “Yeah, but you didn’t do anything. You were just a tiny little baby. I’m pretty sure that you were asleep the entire time.”

“Hey!” Delta says indignantly “You were a baby too. Anyway, I bet that I’m older than you are.”

“Yeah right.” The shock of her journey is beginning to wear off, and Phi smiles. “There’s no way that you’re older when I’m twice as mature as you.”

“Not true!” Delta starts to go off on a rant and Phi takes the moment to close her eyes and breathe deeply. In this timeline she is alive. That is all that she needs to remember.

 

She corners her adoptive father a few months later, long enough for Delta to have put the whole incident out of his mind. There are some things that he doesn’t need to know, and if he didn’t know about this confrontation then he wouldn’t know to go searching around her mind for it. She sneaks out of her room late at night, grateful that she doesn’t share a room like Delta and Left do. The man she calls her father is sitting in his study, nearly asleep in a pile of papers. He’s always been a quiet man; never too warm, but kind all the same. She’s not sure how he will respond to her questions, she just hopes that he takes it well.

“Father?” she says, laying a small hand on his shoulder. He starts, but relaxes once he realizes who’s there. 

“Oh, Phi. Shouldn’t you be in bed? It’s very late.” He pushes a hand through his blond hair.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

His brow furrows. “About what?”

“I know that Delta and I aren’t really your kids. I know that we came from a strange machine when we were babies. I want to know what happened to us after that, and I want to know more about the machine.”

“How--?” He shakes his head and sighs. “You know what, never mind. However you managed to find that out, it can’t be as unbelievable as what that machine can. I studied that thing for years and I still feel like I know nothing about it. I would rather not have you puzzle over that thing for years like I have, but I suppose you have a right to know about it. Ask your questions and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.”

Phi freezes in shock. She had hoped to get answers, but she had expected to be denied. Slowly, she takes a deep breath and mumbles out her question.

“Where did the machine come from? And what exactly does it do?”

Her adoptive father leans back in his chair. “I don’t know who built it,” he says. “A group of German explorers found it on a mission to Antarctica in 1888. Since then it has been in the possession of the laboratory where I used to work. As for what the machine does, we believe that it is able to send copies of people and objects into other worlds and other times.” He pauses, probably expecting some sort of reaction, but she says nothing. All she hears is that the machine can do exactly what she can.

“What about us? When did Delta and I appear?” she says, eager to find more clues to lead her to Sigma and Diana.

“You two arrived in 1904, on your birthday. You were just infants. That was the only time that I ever saw anything come out of the machine. You both had your names written on your feet and a small token placed next to you. Yours was that silver brooch that your mother and I gave to you a few years ago. Delta’s was a music box shaped like a birdcage. I gave it to him when he was younger, but I don’t know what he did with it. Those were the only things that we had to tell us who you were.”

Phi takes a long breath to steady herself. When she had received that brooch years ago she didn’t know what to think of it. It seemed like an odd piece of jewelry to give a young child, so she had locked it up in a box with her savings. To think that that small silver disc was the only tangible thing that she had to connect her to her parents. Her adoptive father gives her a concerned look, but she nods for him to continue. Reluctantly, he clears his throat and continues his story.

“Before the two of you arrived, we tried to send objects to other branches. The original objects would always remain here, but there were no copies made in this world. When you and Delta arrived we decided to test its ability to send things to different times as well. We sent a copy of you into the next millennium. We intended to do the same with Delta, but after we sent you the machine wouldn’t work again for the next ten months. By that time you were toddlers, and you were beginning to become self-aware. I didn’t want you to have to remember if something went wrong, and I didn’t want you two to grow up in a lab, so I skirted some rules and brought you home with me. And I have always loved you two as if you were my own children. I want you to know that, Phi.” He places a warm hand on her shoulder. 

“So there’s another me out there somewhere?” Out of all of the things she had been expecting to hear, that was not one of them.

“Not yet. There will be, if we used the machine correctly. But that will be far in the future. You don’t have to worry about her showing up anytime soon.”

Phi’s mind swims at the thought. Somewhere this machine was waiting for the right time to give birth to her anew. It was like a version of her was asleep in the ether until it could awake into a physical body. And if she was still alive when her copy arrived, then there would be two of her existing at once. The next millennium… it was so far off into the future, but it still seemed too soon.

“If all of your questions are answered, I think it’s time that both of us head off to bed.” Her adoptive father rises from his chair and goes to turn off the light. 

“Yes, I- I think you answered all of my questions.” Phi stands stock still as the room is bathed in darkness. “Good night then.”

“Good night, Phi. Sweet dreams.”

 

The next few years pass quietly. Phi puts the transporter out of her mind. She has no reason to jump between timelines. There are difficulties, especially when adjusting to her new home, but nothing supernatural. For a while it seems as if her life had become as normal as it could be. 

The trouble arises when she is barely sixteen years old. 

She takes her usual route home from the library after a long afternoon of studying, and doesn’t even make it halfway before the streets become choked with people crowding around one spot. She hears whispers and shouts of some kind of incident over on the next street, but nothing that really tells her what had happened. She’s tired and already late for dinner, but curiosity gets the better of her and she ducks into an alley that she knows will take her to the heart of the commotion. 

The street on the other side of the alley is filled to the brim with cops and bystanders. She tries her best to see what is happening, standing on the tips of her toes in an attempt to see over people's shoulders, and then giving up and pushing her way through when that doesn’t work. The air is heavy and hot, foreboding in a way that Phi feels in her stomach. She swallows down the errant fear lodged in her throat and pushes her way to the front of the crowd. 

There’s a boy on the ground, motionless as a statue. His limbs, still gangly from youth, splayed awkwardly around him, his blond hair turning dark from the blood that pooled around his head. Blond. She recoils, every part of her wanting to deny what she sees. But that face, those closed eyes. Everything is far too familiar. Left lays in front of her, bruised and beaten and dead.

Without thinking she pushes away the last few people in front of her and kneels next to the body. Before the blood on the ground can even soak into the fabric of her dress, hands pull her up and hold her back. She drives her elbow into someone's stomach and screams, more out of rage than of fear.

“Miss, this is a crime scene. We need you to stand back.” The voice in her ear is dull and muffled, as if she was hearing it through a door. It doesn’t matter. She needs to see Left. She needs to understand how and when and why this happened. 

Instead she is taken home. She doesn’t know how she manages to give the police her address, as shaky as she is. She doesn’t realize that she’s crying until her eyes are heavy and raw. The cop who escorts her explains that they are still investigating what happened, and that he hopes that justice will be served. He leaves her to sit in silence in the far-too-quiet house.

 

There is a funeral- a small affair with few attendees. Phi looks at the coffin with a blank face. The whole thing is still hard for her to comprehend. Left had been a kind kid, just barely younger than her. He wasn’t able to read minds or hop across dimensions. He just simply lived as he thought was best, and despite that he was killed.

Where Phi is numb, Delta is angry. He rants to her in private about the seeming indifference of the police, how it felt like they weren’t even trying to find the killer. He begs her to go back and stop Left’s death, but she refuses. She remembers the world engulfed by fire, how she was able to escape back to the past, but no one else was. She fears that if she goes back to stop Left’s death, it will only create another path and Delta will continue to travel along this one, pushed forwards by the flow of time. She tries to explain this to him, but he sees not her kindness, only her unwillingness to do what he wants. 

Eventually he gives up on trying to get her to help and decides to focus instead on seeking revenge on whoever was responsible. It’s not healthy, but Phi thinks that it might be better for him to get his anger out like this than to keep it bottled up. 

What she doesn’t know is that he’s been spying on the police while they do their investigation. He goes there to read their minds, and their minds tell him that they have been paid off by the killer. He is more angry than he has ever been, but he says nothing to his sister who refused to save their brother. She’s asleep when he decides to sneak out and go to the house of the man who killed their brother. She doesn’t see him stare in silence as the killer draws a knife across his own neck. She doesn’t experience his taste of revenge.

She does know that after that night Delta walks around with an air of grim satisfaction to him. He stops his revenge planning and goes back to doing whatever it was that he did before the incident. She had never really cared what Delta did in his free time. For all she knows he could just be sitting in a closet eating snails. She goes back to her studying and tries as best she can to ignore the hurt that still lurks deep in her chest.

 

As they get older, Delta becomes more secretive about his affairs. He sends few letters to the family, and hardly ever visits. The rest of the family isn’t quite sure how he makes his money, and Phi privately thinks that he just uses his mind control to steal from people. Whatever it is he does, Phi has elected not to get involved. Delta may be her twin, but she is not her brother’s keeper.

Meanwhile, Phi gets into espionage. 

It certainly wasn’t a career path she was intending to take, but after years of studying psychology and parapsychology to try to find answers about her powers, only to be denied by every PhD program she applied to because she was a girl, spying didn’t seem like a bad idea. War was brewing on the horizon. The government needed someone who was smart, and who spoke German like a native. She needed a job. She finds a bitter sort of irony in the fact that the reason why she was denied from colleges is the same reason why people don’t suspect her of being a spy.

Officially she’s working as a researcher, helping with the development of soldier training programs. Unofficially she’s copying all of the documents that she can get her hands on and handing them off to her co-conspirators. Most of the plans that she sees are idiotic or doomed for failure, but there are some that make her shiver. Methods for psychological conditioning, brainwashing, and body modification. They consume her thoughts so much that she barely pays attention to the mechanical end up. She’s about to put them away when something about the branching design catches her eye.

The blueprints are more like sketches than anything else. It’s obvious that whoever made them didn’t fully comprehend the object that they were trying to portray. Still, they’re accurate enough to be familiar. The oval pods, the strange control panel. Everything reminds her of her jump back to her past. She shuffles through the drawings until she comes across an explanatory note.

_This machine can make copies of people and objects and send them through time. In theory troops could be sent back in time to report on battle outcomes and to recommend strategies. Currently the machine can only copy and transport one person per pod every 10 months. Attempts to transport multiple people in the same pod resulted in a fusion of the two individuals that was unable to be separated, and which died soon after transportation. Still, if we can reverse-engineer it and determine how it functions, it could be a valuable asset for us._

It’s everything that she was hoping not to see. Not only do they know how the machine works, but the plans that they have for it could be devastating. The only ray of hope is that they don’t know how to make more transporters. From what Phi’s seen of the machine, she doesn’t think that they will be able to replicate it any time soon, but there’s still a chance. And besides, the damage that they can do with just one machine is still significant enough to be concerning. She needs to find a way to get the machine someplace safe.

She exchanges hurried letters with her employers trying to convey the necessity of taking the transporter while revealing as little about its nature as she can. Somehow, she feels, it will be better if no one can use this machine. Their first suggestion is to destroy it, but she remembers what her adoptive father told her about the copy of her that still had yet to arrive. Destroying the machine feels like it would be destroying another part of her.

The plan is to intercept the machine as it is being transported to the facility where Phi is stationed. Phi is not part of the interception team, but she knows that as soon as the transporter goes missing, she will be put under suspicion and her cover may be compromised. She will flee the country and return to the States on the same night that the machine is to be captured so that she can be long gone before the German army even realizes that the transporter is missing. As she packs her bags she can’t help but worry, not for herself, but for the copy of her who will arrive in the future. She needs everything to go according to plan, for that Phi’s sake.

 

She arrives in Nevada to the sun scorching through her clothes and the sand shifting loosely beneath her feet. From a security standpoint it makes sense to build a top-secret laboratory in the middle of the goddamn desert, but from a practical standpoint it’s a pain in the ass. Since she is the one who knows the most about the machine, and since her espionage position has been compromised, Phi has been put in charge of research regarding the transporter. As she gazes at the research building, a low tan structure that blends in with the sand around it, she can’t help but feel excitement at the prospect of knowing more about this device that has shaped her life.

 

She works for years on the machine. Works to understand the language that it uses, the composition of the metals that it is made of. She hopes that if she can understand how this machine is able to transport things across time and timelines, she will understand how she is able to do the same with her mind. But her work is relatively fruitless, especially since she forbids any human transportation. She’s still waiting on her own copy to come through.

The answers to most of her questions sound like this: there isn’t anything else like it in the world. Not the metal supports, a complex alloy that can’t be created with current technology. Not the number system, based on multiplication where most others are based on addition. Not even the fabric in the goddamn pods has been seen before. Phi’s personal theory is that it came from somewhere outside of Earth. But that doesn’t explain how she or her powers are connected to it.

In any case, the research it slow going, and it gets even slower once the government starts to lose interest in the project. Their funding check gets smaller and smaller each year until it just stops coming sometime around the mid-1970’s. By then she is the only one of the original researchers still left, though no one would have guessed it by looking at her. At 70 years old she still looks middle-aged at most. She supposes that it’s another quirk of her odd situation, but it’s not one that she resents. Sure, not looking like her actual age makes documentation a pain, but years of dubiously legal employment means that she knows how to forge papers. 

The number of staff dwindles with the money. There never were very many people working in the facility, but with budget cuts they can afford fewer staff members than before. It doesn’t take long for the remaining researchers to move on to newer, more exciting projects, until Phi is the only one left to care. Technically she still works for the government, but any higher-ups or supervisors seem to have forgotten about her. In a few years, she thinks, the entire project will have faded into obscurity. It’s just as well. The other Phi still has yet to appear, and her arrival would have brought about questions that she would rather not answer. Until that happens, Phi has resigned herself to be the transporter’s caretaker. It’s the best thing she can do to make sure that her other self is safe.

 

She is 104 years old when the transporter begins to whirr to life after years of silence. It startles her so much that she spills her morning coffee all over the book she is reading. She doesn’t even stop to clean it off, instead running over to the room where the transporter is held. As she yanks the door open she is met with a lungful of dust. Belatedly, she thinks that it’s been a while since she cleaned this room. All the other rooms in the facility are more lived-in, but she ran out of experiments to do on the transporter years ago. She flicks on the lights and crosses the room just as the machine’s noise lessens to a dull whine. The first exit pod she checks is empty, but the second holds a tiny cloth-wrapped bundle. Phi reaches out and lifts her other self into her arms. The little one is awake, but just barely. She yawns and blinks her blue eyes slowly. On the top of her head is a tuft on ginger hair. On the bottom of one foot is the name “Phi” written in faded marker. This child is everything that she once was, and she has all the potential that she once did. All she needs is someone to raise her well, and Phi is more than willing to take up that task. 

 

If she is going to raise herself, Phi decides that she needs a new name. After all, she doesn’t want to rob her younger self of the name that is her birthright. She’s gone by different names before for various reasons, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. She just needs to come up with one that she likes enough to use for many years. After thinking for what seems like days she settles on “Artemis”. She isn’t sure why at first, but then she remembers what little she knows about her parents. Her mother’s name is Diana, and she’s no mythology buff, but she knows enough to know that Artemis and Diana are one and the same. She will be the mother for this other Phi that she could never have. Almost as an afterthought, she removes the silver brooch from where it has been pinned to her chest ever since that fateful conversation with her adoptive father. She presses a kiss to the smooth metal and pins it to the precious bundle. The Phi of old is no more. The girl in her arms is Phi now.

 

Little Phi is barely a year old when Delta arrives at their facility-turned-home. It’s been years since the twins have spoken, much less seen each other, and though Artemis isn’t surprised to see that he’s alive, she is surprised to see him here. He walks in with a self-confident stride, looking like the villain from a low budget action movie in his black shirt and pants. She gives herself only a second to be glad that Phi is asleep in the other room. She curses that second moments later when she realizes that Delta is probably listening to everything she thinks. She sighs, pours herself a cup of coffee from the pot she brewed hours ago, and decides to forego a traditional greeting.

“What do you want?” She sits down at her kitchen table and stares her brother in the eye. Or at least, she tries to. He’s wearing some obnoxiously mirrored glasses so that she can’t tell if he’s really looking at her or not.

“How rude. Can’t I just come to visit my lovely sister?” He ignores all of her chairs and sits on her counter instead.

“You never have before.”

“Well, in any case, you’re right. I do need something from you.” He removes his glasses to reveal his eyes, black sclera and purple irises like nothing she has seen before. “I need you to give me the transporter.”

The muscles in her body seize and then go numb. Against her will she gets up and walks over to the door that will lead her to the transporter room.

“You know that you can’t just take it, right?” she says, finding that her mouth is still her own even if the rest of her is not. “That thing is huge. You can’t just pick it up and leave with it.” The transporter room is dusty again, but it’s not like she has any reason to clean it anymore. She can feel her body relax as Delta pauses to gaze up at the machine. She considers kicking him in the ass, but he’s so tall that she thinks she might unbalance herself and fall if she did. Why did he have to get all the tall genes? It wasn’t fair.

“You’re right that I can’t take it. But I can make you leave.” He gives her a cold smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you pack.”

“You asshole! You can’t just kick me out! I live here!” She overcomes her earlier restraint and kicks him in the shins hard enough to bruise.

“Now, now, be nice.” he says with just a hint of pain in his voice. “You want to set a good example for the little one, don’t you?”

She freezes without him even having to take control. She knew that he would know, but it still comes as a shock. 

“You must admit that a facility in the middle of the desert is not the best place to raise a child. There are many things here that may be dangerous. If you stay, then something bad might happen.”

“You wouldn’t.” Delta only smiles “You motherfucker. If you hurt her, I will kill you in a thousand timelines.”

“Or you could do as I ask.” Delta walks straight past her and through the door, heading back towards the living quarters. “I know of a nice place in California. It’s in a good school district. I could have the keys for you tomorrow.” He enters her bedroom and pulls a suitcase out of the closet. “It’s up to you.”

“You know it’s not.” She takes the suitcase and rips it out of his hands. “That better be a nice fucking house.”

He smiles like a snake “Only the best for my dear sister.”

“Shut up.”

 

Little Phi grows up and Delta does not visit them again. Just to be cautious Artemis sells the house that he gave her and buys a new one under a different name. They end up moving around a lot when Phi is a toddler. Artemis knows that she’s being paranoid, but she doesn’t want to be under Delta’s control again. What she saw when he visited her scared her. Behind his strange eyes is the same scared, angry kid that was left behind when Left died. She doesn’t trust that kid to run her life.

Phi grows up serious and stubborn, and though it makes taking care of her more difficult, Artemis is happy to see that it’s inherent. She fabricates a story about Phi’s birth and weaves it around the brooch that is her inheritance. Even if the story is strange, it can’t be stranger than tales of transporter pods and time travel. Still, she can’t help but feel a bit guilty when Phi teaches herself Latin in order to feel closer to her “mother”. She know that a time will come when Phi picks apart the gaps in the story, or when she comes across something that reveals the real circumstances of her birth, but until then she will keep up her lie. The truth at the heart of it is that Phi’s mother loved her, and that’s all that’s important.

 

Something goes wrong when Phi is 20 years old, just as Artemis always feared would happen. At first it seems that she’s just late getting home for winter break. It could be that her bus broke down or was delayed, but if that was truly the case, then she would have called to let her know. Deep in her heart Artemis knows that something is wrong. Phi finally gets home hours after she was supposed to, with a story that she missed her bus. The excuse feels cheap. There’s a solemn look in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Artemis knows that feeling, knows that she must have jumped, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead she welcomes Phi home and helps her unpack her bags.

Over dinner Phi mentions signing up for an experiment that she had never mentioned before, and Artemis’s heart sinks. On the surface it’s testing for a potential Mars mission: nothing to do with time travel or ESP, but it still has “Delta” written all over it. She protests to the whole thing, but the only excuse that she can come up with is that she wants her and Phi to spend the holidays together. Phi insists that she needs to go, that she’s an essential part of the experiment, and that there will be a big payoff. The rest of their dinner is quiet, both knowing that the other has something that she’s not willing to say.

 

The day that Phi leaves for the experiment Artemis stops her at the door and holds her tightly.

“Just remember to stay safe.”

“I will, I promise.” She pulls back out of the embrace and looks her in the eye. “Whatever happens, I will make it back home okay.”

A car pulls up to the curb driven by a dark-haired Asian girl that Artemis doesn’t recognize. She gazes up at the two of them and beeps her horn.

“That’s my ride.” Phi pulls away and picks up her bag. “Goodbye. I love you.”

“I love you too.” She watches, heart sinking as Phi gets in the car and speeds away. Somehow she knows that in too many timelines this will be the last time they see each other.

 

In other universes she mourns. In other universes there’s no body to be found. In other universes Phi is decapitated or burned to ash or quarantined as the world crumbles around her. But those are other universes. In this one Phi arrives home in a different car than the one she left in. With her is a tall, dark-haired man with a serious face and a kind-looking woman with bright ginger hair. They both stand aside quietly as the two Phis embrace. When the elder of the two finally lets go, she turns to face the two strangers standing at her door. But they aren’t strangers, not quite. Their faces have an eerie familiarity, like something she saw in a dream once. The recognition hits her just as her younger self goes to introduce them.

“This is Sigma,” she motions towards the man, who nods in acknowledgement, “and this is Diana. They were part of the experiment with me.”

“I know.” The other three raise their eyebrows in surprise. “I know exactly who you are.”

She approaches Sigma and Diana and takes them in. If she looks close enough she can see features that she recognizes from her own face. There is a weariness in their eyes that shows age far beyond their years, but there is love there too. 

Without saying anything more she pulls the two of them into a hug. They startle at first, but quickly relax and hold her tightly. For the first time in her 124 years Phi feels her parent’s warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that Phi says that she was raised by a pair of researchers, but I honestly have no idea who the other person would be, and I doubt that she would be married since there's no way that Phi is straight in any timeline, so I just glossed over it.


End file.
